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Pack wins 3-2 over BC today. Browne with shaky start but quieted down and was solid. Some timely hits and a solo shot in 1st by kizner. And my 16-month old future Wolfpack backstop met mr wolf and enjoyed his first game at the Doak
When the skipper even looks like a fool arguing with umpires, you know you’re in for treat with the calls from the dugout. 1 out 10 chance he actually argues a call that needs arguing
Speaking of former players, today I bumped into Damon Thornton and little dt, his 2 year old. Along with bennerman, Thornton is definitely one of my favorite dunkers this century
On days when the game didn’t look like it came easy to him, I never doubted he was giving it his all. That young man busted his ass every time he put on the red and white. true competitor
Gaudio would likely create a buzz in recruiting. From some in the know at WF, I think he was fine as an assistant. THe problems started when he got the head role. And these weren’t just off-the-court issues with players. Problems with faculty, problems with alums, problems with admin, problems with AD dept staff. Muchos problemas. Maybe its a nonissue as a assistant, but I’m also not sure Gott is a great enough manager to mitigate asst coach problems…Given that Gott’s philosophy seems to be outrecruit everybody and fill out your roster with transfers, Gaudio might help.
^Agreed. We should on paper be marginally better for the simple reason that we can play 2 guards at a time. What a luxury! But marginal improvement and the replacement of a potential ACC POY PG with three years of experience with a FR who’s recovering from an ACL and hasn’t played for a year, well that isn’t exactly the recipe for major improvement. If Smith is as good as advertised and stays healthy, and we have two other guards to play, we should be 5-6 wins better IMO. That’s fairly consistent with where Gott’s been prior to this season. The ceiling is there, the floor looks a lot like this year. Meh.
My hope eroded fairly early in the Season 2. Had watched enough Bama basketball while Gott was at the helm to have a pretty good idea of what we were getting. Humility goes a long way. Admitting mistakes, learning from them, and searching for answers. He never answered the question publicly that was posed when hired: what did you learn in your time off? The response, something vague about the teams with the best players usually win. While there is some truth in that, that isn’t a sustainable model to excel in coaching, pretty much at any level outside the pros. You have to teach at this level and motivate. Is he bad? No. Is he excellent? Not even close. He doesn’t even stack up favorable against his conference peers. I was mocked for suggesting after Years 1 and 2 that those teams should’ve performed better. But they should’ve. And a better coach would’ve done so. Those were his best teams, and they were largely inherited players from a grossly undermining previous tenure.
He raised the bar slightly, only to let it stagnate, then implode and decline. Why? Because an unexpected defection. Ha.
The defensive side is really where the coaching comes into play. If you don’t know how to motivate kids to get after it, you got no chance to win consistently at the college level. You have to build on that end, and then add the offensive pieces, the talent. All the great ones now still play and coach really good defense. If they don’t, they lose. It’s simple. That doesn’t mean playing at a snail’s pace, or being abysmal on offense. It means generating easy baskets. Limiting good looks and opportunities. We don’t do that. Never have. But we had the offense to be competitive. Now we don’t. His pieces. All his.
Lots of opinions on the personal side of things. I have my own. But ultimately, I don’t want to have a beer with him. I just want him to go about his business professionally, reflect positively on the school and the young men he influences, try to improve that performance, and win. As Rye says, you are what your record says you are.
For those who want to point to the last 4. What’s changed is that he now has roster he put together. There are no remaining inherited pieces or recruits. All yours. And you’re going up against better competition than you did in Tuscaloosa, and the results are not remotely close to good. You played on the margins with some really good personnel, and now the personnel is not p to par, nor are the results. That’s it. Any other spin is just that, a spin. Next year, barring substantial improvement with the current players on the roster, I don’t see a significant bump up in wins. We’ll be playing on the margins again at best. At worst, look for something similar.
Not sure if the officiating quality has followed the decline in quality of the overall college basketball product, or the product is mimicking the officiating, but either way, both are bad. Maybe unrelated, maybe not.
I had a baseball scout tell me in the early 1990s that pitchers like Maddox or Glavine would’nt get much of a sniff at the draft then because they didn’t have power arms. I think the same has occurred in basketball. Skills out the window. If you can dunk and have some size and athleticism, those are premiums that have replaced skill. And it shows.
Bad officiating or not, letting any Leonard Hamilton coached team shoot over 50% from the field is just bad. The better play of late has been because we’ve scored it more consistently. Bad first half last night on O + bad defense = loss to bad team.
Heckuva season for as tough as a competitor as we’ve had in a while. Despite some misguided criticism about his play the past two seasons, I’ve always thought he was TOO UNSELFISH.Now he’s the Cat’s meow. Could tell early on in his career he was the type of PG that was a scorer, and needed to get into rhythm by putting it up. His 3pt field goal attempts prior to this season were never enough to really assess how capable he was. And his number prior to this year weren’t terrible.
Think about it. Most talented team, best team, is Year 1. I’m not talking relative to peers, just the ole’ eye test. Year 1. And we’ve pretty much had depth issues at at least a few positions each year, but they’ve gotten worse, not better. Not since Year 1 and 2 have we had as much quality depth.
^ Because he’s never used much bench, whether he had much of one or not. He certainly isn’t going to use in-game situations to teach. Why start now?
After meeting the guy a few years ago outside an official university event, I knew he just didn’t get how big college basketball is in this area. Not really. Doesn’t get that the fanbase is relatively knowledgeable compared with Tuscaloosa. The UCLA connection gives him some idea, but LA isn’t Raleigh. He doesn’t know how ugly it’s going to get. Hanging your hat on the last 4 years doesn’t cut it, not when it looks like this season is an utter disaster, and the prior products were partially attributable to inherited recruits and players. Who’s really buying that a transfer and early departure ruined the season? And those were a big surprise? Really.
My view of his tenure follows:
Year 1 – Gottfried inherited a talented but young and underachieving bunch under Lowe. In Howell, a forward with great hands, a big body, who could score and rebound; a super athletic forward who could jump out of the gym in Leslie; an elite shooter in Wood; a SR guard in Williams who was a coaches son, a lockdown defender (the best we’ve had shy of Cat) who could guard a 2 or 3, and rebounded well; and a big PG who made few mistakes. Of course, there were weaknesses. Give Gottfried credit for molding them and for bringing in a backup PG. Best defensive team he had. Really improved over the second half of ACC play.
Year 2 – Gottfried secured committments from some coveted players. Going into the season we were top 10. That wasn’t an unreal expectation. The biggest loss was Williams, and Painter as a distant second. Big disappointment of a year. Defensively, we were a nightmare. Poor bench management and team management by Gottfried. Were we top 10? Probably not. Should we have at least been top-25? Definitely. Warren was probably underutilized given how efficient he was.
Year 3 – This was probably Gott’s best coaching job, imo. Lost a lot from Year 2. We’ve been hurting at the 2G spot almost every year. Very one-dimensional at that spot, and he’s not shown the ability to get anyone shy of Lacy.
Year 4 – Nice run to Sweet 16 but still underachieved imo due to the same constants–poor defense, poor shot selection at times; inadequate depth at key spots on the floor, mainly at guard. Lacy wasn’t an effective PG backup.
Year 5 – Disaster. No depth. Not quality depth, just simply no depth. Now mix that with the other constants–poor development of players, poor fundamentals on the defensive end, and throw in an injury, and walla…you get a turd and ton of excuses
Can’t remember who it was–maybe Tau–but someone examined the adjusted Kenpom metrics of the last dozen or Final 4’s and national champs. What was found is that almost always, the teams had top defenses. Offenses were also great. But while a team can get hot offensively, they don’t often get hot defensively. Sustained results require really good defense. We’re not anywhere close to that.
The biggest concern for me isn’t the transfers, the poor play, etc., it’s Gott’s seemingly inability to capitalize and build from one year to the next. Now, it seems like we’re on the down slide. Unless there are additions to come, next year we have no backup PG yet again and a FR PG coming off a torn ACL.
His approach to recruiting seems to Calimari’ish but he doesn’t have the results or NBA draft placement to really compete with the Calamari’s. All he can sell is instant playing time. And when the results on teh court or the draft don’t stack up, then he’s going to lose out on a fair share of that talent. THe question is, can you identify and develop the 3-4 star guys. Can you identify roll players…The Lenard Freeman’s are essential to winning, imo.
I think we generally match up with Duke well in years past but not this year. Too slow on the perimeter minus Cat. Better play zone and hope they’re cold. Scoring in the 30s per half ain’t going to cut it.
Ask the wrong questions, get the wrong answers. Lots of transfers, no doubt. To me, a transfer down or a transfer up isn’t really the same as a lateral transfer so citing transfer rates is a bit misleading. Ultimately, I don’t care how many transfers you have unless you don’t adequately plan and account for early exits, injuries, tranfers etc. If not, then it’s a problem. Up to this year, he did a pretty good job managing that situation.
But to me, part of recruiting isn’t just getting the best players, which seems to be Gott’s approach. Part of recruiting in basketball (unless you’re one of the few programs where you just pick from what’s considered the top talent) is accounting for the above and incorporating role players, being honest with them from the start, and developing them. They may not play much early, unless one of the above occurs, but they’ll have the right to earn a spot on the floor and/or can work themselves into a bigger role later. This, of course, requires hardwork on the individual’s part but also teaching and player development, and possibly a scheme that best incorporates that talent.I think this is where he falls short.
Gott’s teams play at a sluggish pace. They generate few turnovers on defense, which doesn’t help speed up play. That isn’t really conducive to playing a deep bench. This is fine, of course, and I could care less about who gets what minutes, and how many minutes they get, as long as you win. To his credit, that was part of why KW saw less and less of the floor last year. I don’t buy the argument you need to go 10-12 deep to speed up play but it sure is helpful. I’ve always said his teams would benefit by playing faster. But I think we all know that isn’t happening. But go team! Good win last night. Hope it’s the start of many a mini-stream of sorts, and with Henderson’s return, maybe they can again make a run…Maybe.
^I generally like Backing the Pack, particularly AkulaWolf’s articles. He questioned GOtt’s hiring from the start, citing the poor defensive showings.
Unfortunately, I don’t think this article is very good. The eye test will tell you as much about offensive production and shot selection. But the defensive numbers are incredibly misleading. Barber is one, if not the best, on-the-ball defenders in the conference. Anya does a pretty solid job altering and blocking shots. But other than that, we’re not very good. FG% defense isn’t really a good measure of defense. It ignores too much. If you look instead at Kenpom, we’re ranked 107 in adjusted defensive efficiency, and we’re 65 in offensive efficiency. The latter number, which is low for a GOTT coached team, clearly indicates the decline in 2 and 3 pt field goal percentage, and overall shot selection. The defensive number is fairly in line with where Gott’s teams are normally, if not slightly worse.
This is Gottball. The roster management problem is a big one this year. I get it, Lacy’s decision threw them for a loop, but even if he stayed, it’s not adequate scholarship usage. No backup PG, only 1 eligible SG? His teams have always had segments of each game, segments of each season, where the intensity and focus is lacking. Always. It’s most evident on the defensive end but it surfaces on the offensive end as well. Now, you don’t even have a full roster to practice against each other, how you think the focus and intensity is going to be? Gott didn’t sit players for dogging it early. He sure isn’t going to sit them now. I’m convinced Washington sat last year, not because of his poor rebounding or defense, but due to his shot selection and ineffective screening for Lacy and Cat. Sitting anyone for defense on a Gott team would be a first.
VaWolf82, I normally agree with you, but not in this case. Couple changes in the landscape of college basketball–massive increases in college coaches pay in mid-majors and the ability to compete from those schools with the big boys–you no longer needing to run off to a “power” conference, particularly if you’re content and don’t even see it as that big of a challenge. The grass just ain’t always greener and the reward isn’t always worth the risk. Yow didn’t write a letter because NC State was viewed poorly or negatively. She wrote a letter because she tried to save face because media outlets all over the place were already announcing who’d turned us down. And she like letters. Hell, she’s more interactive and responsive than most AD’s. And she thought GW had somehow sabotaged the search, which is a crock. Comparing Fowler’s search with Yow’s isn’t really fair either, and that’s not an endorsement of the latter. My criticism of Yow on the past one was that she went for the fresh face, the rising star based on one tourney run, over a tried and true competitor and winner. I like Smart but that was a bad decision.
^And people associate not accepting a job with viewing said job negatively, which is ludicrous. I’ve turned down bigger paychecks multiple times, and it had nothing to do with viewing the job or institution negatively. The same is true here. The basketball program and head coaching job is desirable. Having the right people run a search, offering the right incentives, and timing means a lot. On the other end, personal goals and objective and happiness are equally important. There is no evidence that our program is viewed negatively. We weren’t going to lure Billie Donavan, Rick Pitino, Caliparri, Sean Miller, and lure away coaches at perenial top 10 teams. We were in the hunt for a few rising stars, we didn’t do due diligence, and our AD looked like a fool blasting one of the ACC’s great coaches in the process. And we still landed a solid, if not spectacular coach.
